Year: 2008

McCain and the Dirty Deed

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John Sundman wants sexy details on John McCain, Vicky Iseman, and Paxson Communications. I’ll tell all I know.

Cornerstone TeleVision had sought to obtain the noncommercial license for WQEX, owned by Pittsburgh public broadcaster WQED, and then to transfer the license to Paxson Communications with Cornerstone and WQED splitting the $35 million Paxson was putting up for the sale. The proposal was virtually unprecedented since it involved transfer of noncommercial license held by a public broadcaster to a commercial enterprise. The complicated plan was an attempt to end-run a 1996 FCC ruling that WQEX could not be “dereserved,” i.e., commercialised, by a direct sale to a commercial broadcaster.

The Republican minority on the FCC supported the plan, the Democrats opposed… until John McCain weighed in via his December 10, 1999 letter to the FCC, demanding that the FCC Commissioners ”advise me, in writing, no later than close of business on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 1999, whether you have already acted upon these applications…. If your answer to the latter question is no, please state further whether you will, or will not, be prepared to act on these applications at the open meeting on Dec. 15. If your answer to both of the preceding questions is no, please explain why“ (the full text of McCain’s letter to FCC Chairman William Kennard may be found here).

McCain had held up confirmation of Democrat Susan Ness’ reappointment to the FCC since the previous July. Apprised of McCain’s adamant support for Paxson on this issue, Ness voted against her fellow Democrats to approve the deal. As far as I know, the only ones getting screwed in all this were the Democrats by Ness (who caved to pressure from McCain — and despite repeated gutlessness in dealing with the Republican Congress Ness is frequently mooted as the next FCC Chairman if Clinton is elected).

And even then the well-laid plan of Paxson fell apart over a condition placed by the FCC on the deal, prohibiting Cornerstone from ”proselytising,” an important issue, since the transfer involved a religious broadcaster taking over an educational TV station.

No, I Don't Know Anything About the McCain Story.

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I regret to disappoint my fellow Wetmachiner John Sundman and legions of of folks discovering telecom policy is incredibly sexy (a fact I mentioned in my very first Wetmachine post), but I really have nothing to add about the McCain/Iseman story. This is not Wonkette here folks.

Policy, sure. I can tell you what made this transaction so controversial. And it may even have some bearing on the next FCC, given that one of the folks involved was Susan Ness, the former FCC Commissioner whispered about as the most likely nominee to replace Kevin Martin if Clinton wins. It also, of course, involved Bill Kennard who, along with Reed Hundt, is advising Obama. So I suppose the policy might have some relevance here. But as for the “juicy stuff:”

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John McCain & Vicki Iseman: So FCC policy *is* sexy? Who knew!

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Thanks to an innuendo-laden story by the New York Times last Thursday, everybody who follows USian politics at all knows that Vicki Iseman is a quasi-hot telecom/media lobbyist who for a while eight years ago had a pretty close friendship with Senator John McCain, and that he threw some of his political weight around on behalf of some of her clients. (I tried to find a flattering photo of Ms. Iseman to grace this here blog entry, but all I could find were an elongated pic of her in an evening gown, too big for my purposes, and a horribly unflattering portrait from her company’s website. Oh well, by now you’ve either seen those photos or this story likely ain’t for you anyway.)

What few suspect, however, that this whole story was a cleverly planted plot designed to boost the google rank of Wetmachine into the stratosphere!

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700 MHz Auction: Whither The D Block?

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With even Chairman Martin publically agreeing that D Block is unlikely to attract any new bids, the question logically arises — what now? Needless to say, folks have not been shy about voicing their suggestions — especially those who think we ought to focus on maximizing revenue. Instead, I have a novel suggestion. Why don’t we actually investigate what the heck happened first?

More below . . . .

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The Pity Is That It's True

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Commenting on a piece by The Financial Times columnist Clive Crook on Barak Obama’s likely economy policies if elected, The Economist manages to interject a point desperately depressing, but spot on: “His voting record suggests that, if elected, Mr Obama would be the most economically left-wing American president since … well, it’s hard to say. Richard Nixon?”

The Economist has had Nixon in their sights ever since he briefly introduced wage and price controls in August 1971, violating a core tenet of Chicago School orthodoxy, but on reflection they have a point. Nixon was the last president who was willing to seriously entertain the use of government to fundamentally regulate the economy not solely at the behest of Wall Street and corporate interests. The Friedmanite orthodoxy which was religiously embraced by so many around Reagan and which has subsequently stripped government of the will to regulate the unchecked greed machine of the market was viewed as a sectarian movement, very nearly a cult, by Nixon and his principal economic advisors.

But it says a great deal about how much the progressive movement in the Democratic Party has surrendered that the principal organ of neoliberalism, The Economist, finds that the worst thing it can say about Barak Obama is that he might pursue Nixonian economic policies. Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society are beyond the realm of possibility, much less Roosevelt and the policies which underlay the New Deal. And they are almost certainly right. Obama is as much a captive of the corporate-worshipping wing of the Democratic Party as Billary (the principal reason that Hillary Clinton won’t release her joint income tax returns is that they would reveal that husband Bill has been openly a wholly-owned subsidiary of major U.S. and foreign corporate interests since leaving the White House, just as he was more clandestinely since his first days in Arkansas politics).

With Edwards and Kucinch out of the race there’s very little to enthuse me about a contest between a product of the Daley machine in Chicago and the Democratic Leadership Council’s anointed one. I suspect strongly that Obama will be just another case of “run to the left, govern to the right.” I only wish The Who’s lyrics were right: We won’t get fooled again. But I wouldn’t make book on it.

EcoEquity, Greenhouse Develpment Rights, Bali Conference, Our Planet

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Tom Athanasiou and his good colleagues at EcoEquity attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“The Bali Conference”) & got a chance to share the ideas behind their framework for Development Rights in a Carbon-Constrained World. ( I earlier promised that I was going to give an in depth analysis of their argument, but I’ve changed my mind. They summarize it and present it better than I can, so what’s the point?)

Tom has a few follow-up articles about the Bali Conference and what comes next. In Grist, Environmental News and Commentary, Tom has a kind of Bali Conference trip report. In Foreign Policy in Focus, Tom has a short but important essay, “Towards a Defensible Climate Realism”.

These articles somewhat wonkish in nature, but hey, difficult problems require a little bit of thought, and what policy problem is more difficult or important than climate change? Besides, if you’re reading Wetmachine you probably have a fair amount of wonk in you, or at least geek, which is close enough. For some real insight into what really needs to be done about climate change at the policy level, rather than at the switch-to-energy-efficient-lightbulbs-and-hope-for-the-best level, you need to get acquainted with EcoEquity.

Check ’em out. Better still, subscribe to the EcoEquity newsletter, then you’ll be as in-the-know as I am!

Footnote to Howl

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In an earlier couple of posts, I copped to a certain amount of schadenfreude over the howling in distress of Boston sports talk radio hosts and rabid Patriots fans about the compound insult to their manly self-images from (a) the loss in the SuperDuper Bowl(tm), and (b) dread Prirate Roberts Senator Spectre Specter’s meddling in the spygate affair. As I said before, I’m a Pats fan myself, but all the apotheoses of Brady, Bellichick and Kraft over the last few months and years were really getting on my nerves. Now, today, it gets better: Robert Kraft and the Patriots are being sued for a hunnert million buckaroos by some dude on the Rams who claims his rightful place on a SuperDuperBowl team was stolen from him by the nefarious cheating Patriots. I wonder how Saint Kraft will come out of this one?

Anyway, mostly I wanted to pass along a link to this essay by Yahoo columnist MJD, entitled “Why I’m OK with Arlen Specter’s involvement in Spygate.” It’s funny and it’s good. I agree with him.

P.S. Yes, you literary types correctly detected an allusion to Allen Ginsberg! Footnote to Howl is a sublime poem. But be sure to read it after reading Howl itself. That’s the way the footnote achieves its full poetic power.